Translate home design trends into your artwork
Let's discuss tomatoes, lemons, cabbage, and "grandmillennials", and how they can benefit your craft if you look at home design trends.
Hi! 👋
We're discussing tomatoes, lemons, cabbages, and "grandmillennials" this week, and how it can benefit your craft if you look at home design trends. 🍅
Welcome (back)! 🤗
This is Petra from The Creators' Diary. If this is your first TC’D newsletter, welcome! We’re happy you’ve subscribed!
Share what you think about this issue or the questions you struggle with as a creator by simply replying to this email. A real human (Petra) reads it.
Social time 🥳
Before you dive into our Story of the week, we'd appreciate you following us on social media for video content featuring creators and (my) expert creator business tips. Thanks! 🙏
Story of the week 🗞️
Fruit and vegetable motifs are everywhere in home design now. If it's home design, though, it really means everything in people's homes, and that can include your artwork.
If fruit & vegetable motifs are everywhere in home design, they're likely a popular choice in all artistic outlets, which means creators can benefit from this trend if they can apply it to their own artworks.
A couple of proof points from TikTok, Target, and Paris:
- Summer 2023, "Tomato girl summer": What started as a TikTok vibe turned into a consumer trend celebrating bright fruit and vegetable prints with lemons, cherries, and yes, tomatoes. It was a little bit of retro with a Gen Z makeover, resulting in a cross-generational appeal.
- Spring 2025, Target's "Cabbageware" collection: Plates, bowls, teapots, teacups with cabbage motifs debuted around Easter time this year in Target, which became mega popular on TikTok, too, with over 15 million posts by early March.
- 2025 January's Maison&Objet, one of the biggest interior design events held in Paris, showcased a plethora of 3D grapes, watermelons, peapods, pineapples, tomatoes, barries, carrots, and peppers.
What can you learn from this fruits and vegetables trend as a creator?
- Look at past trends. // "There is nothing new under the sun." ☀️ After the 18th and 19th centuries, the cabbage trend was last popular in the 1960s. Then, Frank Sinatra and First Lady Jackie Kennedy were among the fans of this trend. To this day, many people are on the hunt for original pieces of cabbageware in art markets and antique stores.
- Look at cross-generational appeal. // "We're stronger together." 💪 This fruit and vegetable theme is part of the "grandmillennial" design that brings together retro styles with a contemporary touch. A grandmillennial today is somebody in their 20s and 30s who embraces decor that their parents or grandparents had in their homes and adds modern elements to it.
- Translate home design trends into general art and design trends. 🏠 Even if you don't have functional art pieces, like tableware, you can look at home design trends and think: If the lemon pattern is popular on rugs, the same people might like to see that on their coffee cup, tote bag, wall print, or jewellery.
I'm not suggesting following trends blindly. However, being aware of what direction the world goes and what is deemed as popular among people (and potential buyers) can be useful for you as a creator, and if you happen to work in a medium and style that could meet a specific trend in your own unique way, that's certainly going to benefit you.
Creator quote of the week 📌
u/Artboggler made a really good point in a Reddit discussion about interests vs trends in art:
See you next week,
Petra
Petra Gönczi
